Richard Ryland, London, to Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, [Tuesday], 20 October 1807.

Savage Gardens No. 3

20 Oct 1807

Dear Madam

   Mrs Ryland is at present extremely unwell & some Circumstances here make it so extremely desirable for me to find such a Situation for my second Daughter as your House affords her Sister, and that immediately, that I am about to send her, under the Care of my eldest Son by the Coach which goes from the Swan with 2 Necks in Lad Lane tomorrow morning at 4 o’clock, hoping you will be able to take her in for a few Days at least, till we can find some other Situation, if it shall be thought upon the whole more advisable to all, to have her Separate from her Sister, as before – I hope she can have half her Sister’s Bed till this Arrangement can be made –

   I neither know nor believe that Lucy has now any improper Attachment or Correspondence, more or less – nor even suspect it, nor has there been anything nor do I suspect anything in her Conduct inconsistent with female modesty, & propriety of Behaviour in Respect to the other Servts more or less; that I am quite persuaded you need not have the least scruple of making her your Inmate for any such Reason or Suspicion.

   How far your own domestic Œconomy & Comfort shall incline to the retaining them both instead of Harriet only after the first few Days – and how far on further Consideration it shall after all not seem to us best to have them separate or together will remain for a little more thought – and in particular you will have some little Talk with my Son about it, who is in many Respects older than his years & who feels he has very much his own Honour & Comfort at Stake when he is deciding about grown up Sisters.

   If he finds that he gets to Salisbury after Eleven he has my Orders to sleep at the Inn & not disturb your family until Thursday morng.

   I beg my best Respects to Mr Saffery and remain

                     Madam

                                 Your obliged Friend & Servt

                                             R Ryland

Text: Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, II.D.5.a.(13.), Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Address: Mrs M G Saffery | Revd Mr Saffery’s | Salisbury | Wiltshire | Oct 20th – /7. Postmark: 20 October 1807. For an annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 246-47.

Lucy Ryland (1787-c. 1833) was the second eldest child of Richard and Harriet Ryland. Like her sister, Harriet Frances, Lucy figures prominently in the Saffery Correspondence. She will alternate living with the Safferys in Salisbury and the Whitakers at Bratton for the next four years. On 15 June 1813 in Salisbury she married Joseph Stapleton, Jr. (b. 1792) of Ardleigh Hall, near Colchester, five years her junior and already known to the Whitakers at Bratton. The Stapletons settled at Bradford-on-Avon, the same village where Marianna Attwater Head lived from 1773 until her death in 1832, most likely attending the same Baptist chapel there. Joseph and Lucy Stapleton named their first son Joseph Whitaker Stapleton (b. 1814), who was followed by six other siblings: William Carey Stapleton (b. 1818), Lucy Stapleton  (b. 1819), Harriet Stapleton (b. 1821), Cowper Croft Stapleton (b. 1824), Henry Leighton Stapleton, (b. 1826), and Maria Dix Stapleton (b. 1827). Maria Saffery composed a poem in memory of Lucy Ryland Stapleton just after her death (see Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 5, p. 231).